Many people lack a factual understanding of events in our region because the media report them inadequately. We blog here because our daughter Malki, murdered at the age of 15 in a restaurant massacre in Jerusalem, was a victim of jihadist hatred and barbarism. For jihadism and terrorism to end in Israel, New York, Madrid, London and everywhere else, people first need to understand the scale on which it is happening and why. This ongoing war is killing us.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

25-Nov-14: How different from the Nigerian Islamists are the Pal Arab terrorists?

Two girls did, in fact, come back today - with bombs
inside their clothes. The others are still where they were
[Image Source]

The largest city in the Nigerian state of Borno, is Maiduguri, with a population of about 1.2 million, most of them Muslim.

In 2006, at the height of the drama over a newspaper in far-off Denmark publishing cartoon images of the central figure in Islam, riots broke out, fifteen people were killed there and twelve Christian houses of worship were destroyed. And then things got devastatingly worse.

Nigeria's highest profile terrorist organization, Boko Haram, visited phenomenal violence on the area in July 2009, leaving 700 people dead in its wake. They have continued to carry out mind-numbingly bloody attacks right up to this month. Despite this, according to its Wikipedia entry, Maiduguri is popularly known as the City of Peace. But possibly not after today.

This morning, two female human bombs walked into Maiduguri's crowded main market a little after 11 o'clock. One exploded, and it appears three women were killed. Then when (as Nigeria's most influential newspaper puts it)

unsuspecting sympathisers gathered to watch the scene, the second girl who was also heavily wired with explosives screamed and then the device hidden under her garment blew up killing about 30 persons.... The Civilian-JTF chieftain explained that "from what one of the survivors told me while being helped to get to the hospital, the bombers were two girls dressed in full hijab..." [Leadership, Nigeria, today]

(UPDATE: Another Nigerian source says the death toll has risen to 45 and that the second human bomb was male; the explosion ensures it will be hard to tell from visual inspection.)

Boko Haram is said to mean "Western education is forbidden" in the Hausa language, according to the BBC, and it is

waging an insurgency in Nigeria. It was based in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, after its formation in 2002, but it has since been driven out of the city by the military and vigilante groups. It now controls a large number of towns and villages in Borno, amid fears that it is preparing to launch an assault to capture Maiduguri. [BBC, today]

From the time it was formed, it claimed to be "opposing Western education". But an education campaign like this is unique in historical terms. Today, the Boko Haram people are open about seeking to create an Islamic state by military means; education has evidently slipped down their list of goals. And military in their case means kidnapping hundreds of school-girls in April 2014 (and still holding most of them despite Mrs Obama's Instagram campaign), and by mutilating shoppers and traders in open-air market places; a July 2014 truck bomb in the same city killed at least 56 people.

having nothing to do with Islam and against its basic tenets. The OIC continues to issue statements condemning every heinous killing and destruction of property committed by this group and urging the authorities to intensify their efforts to end these acts of terrorism and violence and bring the perpetrators to justice while offering its solidarity and assistance. [Alarabiya, July 2014]

But how different are Boko Haram from the other Islamist barbarians Hamas and Hezbollah, or from so-called secular Arab terrorists groups like Fatah and PFLP that are the "freedom fighting" darlings of the OIC? And do their values and their actions really have nothing to do with Islam?

Boko Haram send immature boys ("A gunman who looked like a 12-year old boy") to do their terrorist bidding. Husam Abdo, a 'mentally challenged' 14 year old Palestinian Arab boy was sent by his Fatah handlers to a certain death, with 8 kilo of explosives strapped to his torso, convinced that this was his best chance of having sex with 72 virgins. This is no figure of speech, but to be taken literally; see this BBC report and this CBS News report, "Bomb Boy's Family Mad At Militants".

Add to this that Palestinian Authority TV routinely screens children's programs in which teenagers and pre-teens, like the little girl in the screenshot above right, probably 10 or 11 years old, sing of their desire to die as martyrs for the Palestinian Arab cause. Dozens of additional instances appear on this Palestinian Media Watch page and throughout the web.

The mass murderers of Boko Haram don't regard themselves as having "nothing to do with Islam". Their leader, Abubakar Shekau , said just three months ago [BBC, August 25, 2014] that his forces have "set up an Islamic state in the towns and villages it has seized in north-eastern Nigeria." He makes it clear that his men, women and children are saving the world for Islam.

Flag of Boko Haram which, as the
Organization of Islamic
Cooperation says, has nothing
to do with Islam [Image Source]

We feel the embarrassment of the writer from the Organization of Islamic Co-operation ["Denying Boko Haram its assumed Islamic identity", July 15, 2014] . Who wants to be classified as being "like" the blood-lusting savages of Boko Haram, most of whose victims are said to be Muslims? But then how different is that from the blood-lusting ISIS killers of (mainly) Muslims in Iraq and Syria?

publics hold very negative opinions of well-known extremist groups, such as al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah. In Nigeria, the vast majority of respondents, both Muslims and Christians alike, have an unfavorable view of Boko Haram, the terrorist group that recently kidnapped hundreds of girls in the restive north of the country. And a majority of Pakistanis have an unfavorable view of the Taliban... as well-publicized bouts of violence, from civil war to suicide bombings, plague the Middle East, Africa and South Asia... [Pew Research]

But if people's lives depended on what public opinion feels about terrorists, then public opinion pollsters like Pew would be running states. As we know, they don't. In reality, acts of terror consistently get huge support from certain specific demographics, Pew's research notwithstanding. And major international roof-bodies - like OIC which speaks for 56 nations [listed here] making it the largest international grouping of countries after the UN - line right up behind the terror organizations that do them,

And leaving aside what "publics" think, can we look at how the OIC - the "only official voice of the Muslim world" - looks at Hamas and the other jihad organizations? How, for instance, does it feel about Hamas training Palestinian Arab children to want to die as young martyrs? What does it consider to be the very worst kind of terrorism? As it happens, this we can answer:

At the 34th Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers (ICFM), an OIC section, in May 2007, the foreign ministers termed Islamophobia the worst form of terrorism... [source]

"We reject any attempt to link terrorism to the struggle of the Palestinian people in the exercise of their inalienable right to establish their independent state with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital... We reject any attempt to associate Islamic states or Palestinian and Lebanese resistance with terrorism which constitutes an impediment to the global struggle against terrorism..." A clearer vote of confidence in Hezbollah, Hamas and Fatah would be hard to find.

And it articulated this clear warning: "We reject any unilateral action taken against any Islamic country under the pretext of combating international terrorism, as this will undermine global cooperation against terrorism".

It established a thirteen member ministerial-level OIC Committee on International Terrorism. If that committee has done anything, or even put out a press release since 2002, we can;t find any sign on-line. Seems to be nothing more than a fig leaf.

Faced with acts of beastial savagery like the axe/hatchet/butcher knife attack on Jews at prayer in a Jerusalem synagogue, the otherwise voluble OIC - which expresses views on a wide range of issues all the time - is silent. Its search engine [here] seems to let a person search on any word and see what the OIC stand is. But if you enter "Jerusalem"... well, try it and see what happens.

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THIS ONGOING WAR is not part of the activity of the Malki Foundation which was founded by us, Frimet and Arnold Roth of Jerusalem, on September 9, 2001. But it is inspired by the same tragic circumstances. The Malki Foundation (also known by its Hebrew name: Keren Malki) is a memorial to the life of our daughter, Malki. She's in the photo below this paragraph. Malki was murdered at the age of 15 in a massacre in the centre of Jerusalem carried out by Hamas.

Beyond its function as a remembrance of a beautiful life, the foundation provides tangible, concrete, invaluable support daily to several thousand Israeli families from every part of the religious and socio-economic spectrum: Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Druze and others who care at home for a seriously disabled child.

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This Ongoing War: About this blog

Many people lack a factual understanding of events in our region because the media often report them inadequately. Our daughter Malki, murdered at the age of 15 in a restaurant massacre in Jerusalem, was a victim of jihadist hatred and barbarism. For jihadism and terrorism to end in Israel, in New York, in Madrid, in London and everywhere else, people first need to understand the scale on which it is happening. This ongoing war is killing us.